A late summer's day dawned like many others before it. Cloudiness for the morning kept it mild, and check of the low elevations began and ended in peace, so back up the mountain she went alongside the arrival of afternoon's humidity. Not long after, she noticed the clouds dissipating, and wondered just how warm it would get now with a barely-contained huff. She did want a hunt, since the allure of something fresh chased her, but not if too miserable out; she just may have to wait until dusk.

She kept to her path upward, weaving past the thickest of their forests, and further still. When it cleared enough, she slowed up and noticed that something seemed off, like a very subtle tone shift in the natural light she was used to. Her eyes narrowed and skin prickled responsively, thinking at first that she was misinterpreting this. The more she looked around, the more confirmation she found. For a clear day, this sunlight was not.. quite right and by the moment, it seemed to be darkening ever-so-slightly.

She pressed onward towards a clearing.. one only fringed by the forests she'd come from. Ambiguously, she raised her muzzle and called low for her pups--@Vela, @Galaxy, and Jarilo primarily. They shouldn't be far away from here, and the note would serve to raise the curiosities of the pack that would hear it too. Skyward, there were cosmic acts at play. Something was shifting, and nature was waiting.

All full of energy, and himself, he went romping happily after Papa when he'd come to gather him up from his nosing around. He'd been growing a lot lately too here on the back-end of a good spurt of growth, so his big awkward stride was especially big and awkward as they went to meet up with his mama, and probably his sisters too. Jarilo was in good spirits anyway, and had been even before the prospect of seeing the other wolves he favored most of all. Now with that goal in mind and coming closer with every stride forward through the woods, he was pushing it to borderline obnoxious levels of excitement.

When he saw the others he went rushing to Mama then leapt at her to lick her chin. She tolerated it barely with a bit of an exchange, but didn't seem too interested in him right this moment, especially not compared to his ruckus. It was this that began to key him into more as he sidled in beside Galaxy with an excited wiggle of his whole rump. He pressed up against her entire side for good measure, and shot his questioning glances all around--scenery, Papa, scenery, then Mama. Now that he bothered to pay more mind, he realized something was feeling very different, and this had him sobering quickly. The light was fading, yet he was certain it wasn't time to be night.. so if not that, then why?

Dark, yet somehow still light, at once.. but she saw the darkness deepening steadily by the moment. Certainly eerie. She couldn't help but be reminded of dusk as she found her family beginning to trickle to her side, one by one starting with the rawboned Galaxy and her questions. Amekaze's brow furrowed, keen to feed into her daughter's curiosity, but pained by the sight of her so thinned. "The sun is being blocked out," she explained quietly, although was far more familiar with lunar eclipses versus solar—especially when it came to experiencing them of this magnitude firsthand herself. "So, almost, night is coming during the day." As evidenced around.

These events she knew far more intimately in fictitious myth and legend, and certainly never approaching such a full totality to be this noticeable. Sun goddesses driven into hiding, fierce sun-devouring dragons, an extinguished sun.. all founded in the sight of what was unfolding above. It was still too bright to look at for long, so accordingly, this was no easy phenomenon to explain when stealing brief glances between the treetops' cover. She exhaled softly, torn between the curious anticipation of what may come in moments to follow, and a strange sense of reverence.

Before she could shape more observation and hypothesis into word, and hope to understand this better, Charon and by extension, Jarilo arrived. The boy got a nip, her mate a nod (mainly for shoving food beneath Galaxy's nose), and she stood over them both protectively. "Listen, the nighttime bugs are even starting to come out, just like dusk.." she offered as well, twitching an ear as she spoke to the pups.

Jarilo peered around wide-eyed, torn between a growing uncertainty and curiosity. What was this!! Thankfully, everyone else was already voicing their questions, although the answers may not be as clear-cut as he might like to process.

Since squinting upward towards the sun didn't show him anything except an immediate sting that diverted him, so once recovered, he busied himself more with looking around, instead of up. But he wasn't sure what to look for. The growing shift in light so soon had him feeling strange already but generally, most everything else seemed pretty typical—and with his family all around, it was harder for him to find earnest things to be concerned about. Mama was right, though, the night bugs were singing their songs, really completely easing them into the aesthetic of a coming night. A piece of him kind of liked it, despite how inherently bizarre he recognized it as. Fascination towards that was enough to peel him from Galaxy's side, and therefore, Hydra's immediate shade. "The shadows are being weird too..!" he voiced, gesturing at the strange patterning the sunlight cast between the nearby tree leaves.

While she wanted to lend all of her attention to the skies, questions came quickly. "Yes, exactly, do not look right at it right now. When it gets darker, you can only if you are careful," she reaffirmed sternly after her older daughter to really drive the point home. It was tempting, she understood, but quick glimpses were for the best here. Jarilo was already catching onto the shadows it cast, too, so that was another way to behold the oddity of the sun blacking out in the middle of the day. "I do not know what blocks it out exactly—but I have heard many different attempts to explain, from a giant dragon swallowing it, squabbling gods disrupting its glow, the sun simply being angry and leaving its post for a quick break..." she glanced from pup to pup as she explained, but of course, any were free to draw their conclusions from what she could impart. With something so celestial and faraway, dividing fact from fiction was entirely negotiable, and in her mortal life, she may never have the answers for sure. "One that interested me most of all may be that it is a quarrel between the sun and the moon, in which the moon overtakes the sun, which is why nighttime comes during the day." She quieted then for a few more breaths—a pause that suggested, again, to look how dark was now.

But it all could easily be founded in nonsense from tales passed from generations downward. Who knew. She'd never seen a dragon or a god in the flesh, especially not one massive enough to disturb the sun, nor could she spot the moon in the sky right now to let it take the credit for this due to its phase. All were just maybes at best. "Maybe one day we could know for sure what it is. But they do not happen often.. not like this," she swung her snout to the nearby mountainscape, and then, it went even darker as the eclipse edged in the very last seconds before full totality.